Israeli intelligence exposed Russian hackers who used Kaspersky software for breaking in

Israeli intelligence authorities warned their American colleagues that hackers from Russia used anti-virus programs made by Kaspersky Lab to break into computers of U.S. federal agencies.

As The New York Times writes, the hackers used these programs to get access to secret documents of the U.S. National Security Agency.

According to the sources of the newspaper, the Israeli secret services managed to infiltrate the computer network of Kaspersky Lab, and observe how Russian hackers used it to penetrate private and government computers around the world. The Israelis allegedly reported this to their American colleagues 2 years ago. This information ultimately led to a ban on the use of Kaspersky Lab’s programs in all U.S. government institutions.

A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian hackers had stolen classified documents from a personal computer of an employee of the U.S. National Security Agency with the help of Kaspersky‘s antivirus program.

According to The New York Times, Israeli experts followed the activities of Russian hackers who were searching for classified information on U.S. government computers, and forwarded them to Russian intelligence servers. They allegedly provided the U.S. intelligence services with evidence of Russian cyber attacks.